Original Artwork by Kirby on Display

About Jack Kirby:
Jack Kirby (1917-1994) was more than just a comic book artist: he was a storyteller, an innovator, and a visionary. His early work with Joe Simon on Captain America in the early 1940s saw characters breaking panel borders and narrative conventions as they fought across the pages. As superheroes fell out of favor for a period after World War II, he and Simon helped revitalize the industry with work on crime, war, sci-fi, and monster comics, while inventing the romance comic genre.  By the time Kirby was doing what became his most famous and enduring work at Marvel in the 1960s, he was a seasoned veteran, yet only just coming into the full power of his creativity.
 
From the earliest Fantastic Four and Thor stories, Kirby crafted an entire industry that now fuels billion dollar blockbuster movies and prestige TV shows. In a few short years, Kirby populated the Marvel Universe with an unforgettable array of characters, such as pop culture icons the Avengers, X-Men, and more. From the relatively tame early stories with those characters, Kirby’s superhero epics quickly became increasingly cosmic, mind-expanding, and ambitious in their scope.
 
Kirby’s prolific but strained working relationship/partnership with Stan Lee couldn’t fully satisfy his overabundance of storytelling ideas, and he left Marvel in 1970 for chief competitor DC Comics, where he served as writer, artist, and editor on his own line of books, creating an entirely new cosmology that remains a cornerstone of that company’s storytelling, over 50 years after he left the very titles he founded. Biblical in tone and mythical in scope, Kirby’s 1970s output remains some of the most startlingly ambitious work ever put on display in mainstream superhero comics. His ideas and storytelling techniques continue to inform virtually everyone who puts pencil to paper in the industry.
 
Kirby’s stories look for the best, most universal qualities of the human experience, even as the characters themselves reach beyond the cosmos. If there were a Mt. Rushmore of 20^th century pop culture storytelling, Kirby should be etched alongside fellow visionaries like George Lucas, Gene Roddenberry, and Steven Spielberg.
 
About Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center:
The Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center is organized exclusively for educational purposes; more specifically, to promote and encourage the study, understanding, preservation, and appreciation of the work of Jack Kirby. They are committed to illustrating the scope of Kirby’s multi-faceted career, communicating the stories, inspirations, and influences of Jack Kirby, celebrating the life of Jack Kirby and his creations, and building an understanding of comic books and comic book creators. To this end, the Museum sponsors and otherwise supports study, teaching, conferences, discussion groups, exhibitions, displays, publications, and cinematic, theatrical, and multimedia productions. For more info, visit KirbyMuseum.org.